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Gravitational wave spectrum of chain inflation
KTH, Centres, Nordic Institute for Theoretical Physics NORDITA.ORCID iD: 0000-0001-9490-020X
Oskar Klein Center for Cosmoparticle Physics, University of Stockholm, 10691 Stockholm, Sweden.
Department of Physics, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas 78712, USA; Oskar Klein Center for Cosmoparticle Physics, University of Stockholm, 10691 Stockholm, Sweden.
2024 (English)In: Physical Review D: covering particles, fields, gravitation, and cosmology, ISSN 2470-0010, E-ISSN 2470-0029, Vol. 110, no 10, article id 103526Article in journal (Refereed) Published
Abstract [en]

Chain inflation is an alternative to slow-roll inflation in which the inflaton tunnels along a large number of consecutive minima in its potential. In this work we perform the first comprehensive calculation of the gravitational wave (GW) spectrum of chain inflation. In contrast to slow-roll inflation the latter does not stem from quantum fluctuations of the gravitational field during inflation, but rather from the bubble collisions during the first-order phase transitions associated with vacuum tunneling. Our calculation is performed within an effective theory of chain inflation which builds on an expansion of the tunneling rate capturing most of the available model space. The effective theory can be seen as chain inflation's analog of the slow-roll expansion in rolling models of inflation. The near scale-invariance of the scalar power spectrum translates to a quasiperiodic shape of the inflaton potential in chain inflation, with the tunneling rate changing very slowly during the e-folds leading to cosmic microwave background observables. We show that chain inflation produces a very characteristic double-peak GW spectrum: a faint high-frequency peak associated with the gravitational radiation emitted during inflation, and a strong low-frequency peak associated with the graceful exit from chain inflation (marking the transition to the radiation-dominated epoch). There exist very exciting prospects to test the gravitational wave signal from chain inflation at the aLIGO-aVIRGO-KAGRA network, at LISA and /or at pulsar timing array experiments. A particularly intriguing possibility we point out is that chain inflation could be the source of the stochastic gravitational wave background recently detected by NANOGrav, PPTA, EPTA, and CPTA. We also show that the gravitational wave signal of chain inflation is often accompanied by running/ higher running of the scalar spectral index to be tested at future cosmic microwave background experiments.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
American Physical Society (APS) , 2024. Vol. 110, no 10, article id 103526
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Physical Sciences
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:kth:diva-357689DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevD.110.103526ISI: 001368150900010Scopus ID: 2-s2.0-85210358368OAI: oai:DiVA.org:kth-357689DiVA, id: diva2:1920796
Note

QC 20241217

Available from: 2024-12-12 Created: 2024-12-12 Last updated: 2025-01-17Bibliographically approved

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